Richard Fade

Richard Fade has more than 35 years of operational, business development and investment experience.He is currently a Partner at Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm in Bellevue Washington investing in early stage technology, software and services companies. Mr. Fade's prior investments include more than a dozen virtualization, software as a service, cloud, and storage technology companies. Most recently Appature (IMS Health 2013), Azaleos (Avanade 2012), Likewise (Isilon/EMC 2012), StorSimple (Microsoft 2012) and Whiptail (Cisco 2013). He currently serves on the boards of Onehub, Talyst and Spaceflight Industries and is a Board advisor and angel investor in several early stage technology companies in the Northwest. Prior to joining Ignition, Mr. Fade was 16 years at Microsoft Corporation in leadership roles including serving on Microsoft’s Executive Staff for 10 years as a division level vice president. His positions included; Senior Vice President of the OEM division responsible for Microsoft’s business with PC OEM and embedded software business, VP Desktop and Consumer Applications, overseeing the creation of Office 97 and other desktop applications, Vice President of the Internet Business Unit and Vice President Far East Region including product development for Japan, China and Korea. Mr. Fade led the teams that produced the first successful Asian language versions of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office applications. Mr. Fade has served on several non-profit boards and independent schools including presently Whitman College.